Catalyst

Sundance Institute’s Catalyst program builds a culture of partnership between independent investors and filmmakers. Each year, we endeavor to unlock funding for ambitious new independent films and to grow the community of indie-film supporters.

Catalyst brings together both new and experienced film investors through highly curated film financing opportunities, custom programming, and engagement with the Sundance Institute community. We offer new investors a guided entry into film financing, and we present our entire cohort with exceptional projects, intimate discussions about various aspects of the film business, and personalized support in sourcing projects and developing partnerships with filmmakers.

We train selected filmmakers to effectively present their films for independent financing, and we provide them with continued support throughout the lives of their projects. We also offer Catalyst artists guidance in building successful investor relationships, access to mentorship, and critical project and budgetary feedback. Applications are solicited by invitation only.

Our year-round program includes strategy workshops, artist and industry talks, social events, bespoke film financing opportunities, and the signature Catalyst Forum, which features a curated slate of projects seeking funds. Since its founding in 2013, over $35 million has been raised to support 102 fiction and nonfiction films through Catalyst.

Application Timline

Catalyst applications are solicited by invitation only. When applying, you will be asked to upload your script (for fiction projects) or supply footage (for nonfiction projects), key team bios, budget total, financing raised and sought, production timeline, and links to previous work, among other key materials.

March–May 2021 Application period

July 2021 Projects selected

July–September 2021 Filmmaker preparations

September 2021 Catalyst Forum

Catalyst Forum Project Criteria

Catalyst Forum (September 2021) is an invitation-only opportunity for feature-length fiction and nonfiction film projects that meet the following criteria:

Projects with at least one member of the above-the-line team who is a Sundance Institute alumni will be given strong preference. Sundance alumni status includes having taken a project through a Sundance Institute lab, fund, or fellowship, or having exhibited prior work at the Sundance Film Festival.
We prefer projects that have at least one US-based member of the above-the-line team, but we will also consider international applicants.
Projects must have a strong producer with at least one feature credit attached. A producer and the director from each project must present together at Catalyst Forum.
Project budgets must not exceed $3,000,000 USD, and budget gaps may not be smaller than $250,000 USD. Exceptions may be made on a limited and case-by-case basis.
Projects must have a budget gap and be open to equity investments and/or granting contributions from multiple individual investors as part of their financing plan. Projects with partial financing in place are welcome and encouraged to apply.
Projects must have preliminary financing plans and be ready to actively engage with financiers. This includes having structures in place to accept funding by the time of the Catalyst Forum, such as a fiscal sponsor or LLC.
Fiction only: Projects must have a script in advanced development. Films that have tangible components in place, like a production start date or cast and crew attachments, tend to unlock more funding.
Nonfiction only: Projects can be in any phase of production—including development, pre-production, production, and post-production—but must have sample footage to share.
Projects must feature compelling, original subject matter and a distinctive directorial vision.
Resubmissions are permitted if a major element has changed.
Multiple submissions from the same team are discouraged.

Past Catalyst Projects

Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock

Director Cody Lucich
Producers Heather Rae, Gingger Shankar
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Standing Rock, 2016: the largest Native American occupation since Wounded Knee. Thousands of activists, environmentalists, and militarized police descend on the Dakota Access Pipeline in a standoff between oil corporations and a new generation of Native warriors. This chronicle captures the sweeping struggle, spirit, and havoc of a people’s uprising.

Always in Season

Director Jacqueline Olive Producers Jacqueline Olive, Jessica Devaney Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency

When 17-year-old Lennon Lacy is found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014, his mother’s search for justice and reconciliation begins, as the trauma of more than a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present.

Audrie & Daisy

Director Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
Producers Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Sara Dosa
Premiere 2016 Sundance Film Festival

After two high-school girls in different towns are sexually assaulted by boys they consider friends, online bullying leads each girl to attempt suicide. Tragically, one dies. Assault in the social-media age is explored from the perspectives of the girls and boys involved, as well as their torn-apart communities.

The Bad Kids

Director Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe
Producers Keith Fulton, Lou Pepe
Premiere 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Special Jury Award for Vérité Filmmaking

At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-risk students command of their own futures. This coming-of-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-called “bad kids.”

Beach Rats

Director Eliza Hittman
Producers Brad Becker-Parton, Andrew Goldman, Drew P. Houpt, Paul Mezey
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Dramatic Directing Award

An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.

Before You Know It

Director Hannah Pearl Utt
Producers Mallory Schwartz, Josh Hetzler, James Brown
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

A long-kept family secret thrusts codependent, thirtysomething sisters Rachel and Jackie Gurner into a literal soap opera. A journey that proves that you really can come of age, at any age.

Blowin' Up

Director Stephanie Wang-Breal
Producers Carrie Weprin
Premiere 2018 Tribeca Film Festival

Blowin’ Up looks at sex work, prostitution, and human trafficking through the lens of our nation’s first human-trafficking intervention court in Queens, New York.

Bull

Director Annie Silverstein
Producers Bert Marcus, Heather Rae, Audrey Rosenberg, Monique Walton, Ryan Zacarias
Premiere 2019 Cannes Film Festival

In a near-abandoned subdivision west of Houston, a wayward teen runs headlong into her equally willful and unforgiving neighbor, an aging bullfighter who’s seen his best days in the arena; it’s a collision that will change them both.

Cartel Land

Director Matthew Heineman
Producers Matthew Heineman, Tom Yellin
Premiere 2016 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Directing and Cinematography Awards

In this classic western set in the twenty-first century, vigilantes on both sides of the border fight the vicious Mexican drug cartels. With unprecedented access, this character-driven film provokes deep questions about lawlessness, the breakdown of order, and whether citizens should fight violence with violence.

Chasing Coral

Director Jeff Orlowski
Producers Jeff Orlowski, Larissa Rhodes
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Audience Award

Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers, and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world.

Crip Camp

Director Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht
Producers Sara Bolder, Jim LeBrecht, Nicole Newnham
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Audience Award: U.S. Documentary

Down the road from Woodstock in the early 1970s, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for disabled teenagers, transforming their young lives and igniting a landmark movement.

Dark Money

Director Kimberly Reed
Producers Bert Marcus, Heather RaeKimberly Reed, Katy Chevigny
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Dark money contributions, made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, flood modern American elections—but Montana is showing Washington, DC, how to solve the problem of unlimited anonymous money in politics.

The Devil We Know

Director Stephanie Soechtig
Co-director Jeremy Seifert
Producers Kristin Lazure, Stephanie Soechtig, Joshua Kunau, Carly Palmour
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Unraveling one of the biggest environmental scandals of our time, a group of citizens in West Virginia take on a powerful corporation after they discover it has knowingly been dumping a toxic chemical—now found in the blood of 99.7 percent of Americans—into the local drinking water supply.

Farewell Amor

Director Ekwa Msangi
Producers Huriyyah Muhammad, Sam Bisbee, Josh Penn
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Reunited after a 17 year separation, Walter, an Angolan immigrant, is joined in the U.S. by his wife and teenage daughter. Now absolute strangers sharing a one-bedroom apartment, they discover a shared love of dance that may help overcome the emotional distance between them.

The Fight

Director Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, Eli Despres
Producers Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, Eli Despres, Maya Seidler, Peggy Drexler, Kerry Washington
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking

Inside the ACLU, a team of scrappy lawyers battle Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.

The Force

Director Peter Nicks
Producers Linda Davis, Lawrence Lerew, Peter Nicks
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Directing Award, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking

This cinema vérité look at the long-troubled Oakland Police Department goes deep inside their struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson, and an explosive scandal.

The 40-Year-Old-Version

Director Radha Blank
Producers Lena Waithe, Radha Blank, Inuka Bacote-Capiga, Jennifer Semler, Rishi Rijani
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival

A down-on-her-luck New York playwright decides to reinvent herself and salvage her artistic voice the only way she knows how: by becoming a rapper at age 40.

The Great American Lie

Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Producers Amanda Mortimer, Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Premiere 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival

The Great American Lie examines how a U.S. value system built on the extreme masculine ideals of power, dominance, and control has glorified individualism, institutionalized inequality and under-mined the ability of most Americans to achieve the American Dream.

Hooligan Sparrow

Director Nanfu Wang
Producers Nanfu Wang
Creative producer Peter Lucas
Premiere 2016 Sundance Film Festival

Traversing Southern China, a group of activists led by Ye Haiyan, a.k.a. Hooligan Sparrow, protest a scandalous incident in which a school principal and a government official allegedly raped six students. Sparrow becomes an enemy of the state, but detentions, interrogations, and evictions can’t stop her protest from going viral.

The House of Tomorrow

Director Peter Livolsi
Producers Tarik Karam, Danielle Renfrew Behrens
Premiere San Francisco Film Festival 2017

When a sheltered teen raised inside a geodesic dome meets a rebellious kid with a heart transplant, the two form a punk band to escape an oppressive grandmother, an overprotective father, and the looming legacy of renowned futurist Buckminster Fuller.

The Hunting Ground

Director Kirby Dick
Producers Amy Ziering
Premiere 2015 Sundance Film Festival

From the makers of The Invisible War comes a startling exposé of rape crimes on U.S. campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and brutal social toll. Weaving together vérité footage and first-person testimonies, the film follows survivors as they pursue their education and justice—despite harsh retaliation, harassment, and pushback.

I’m No Longer Here

Director Fernando Frias de la Parra
Producers Gerry Kim, Alberto Muffelmann, Gerardo Gatica, Fernando Frias de la Parra
Premiere 2019 Morelia Film Festival

Following the death of his older brother, a teenage Mexican boy is forced to migrate to New York City. When he arrives, he quickly realizes that the violence plaguing his home is no match for the feelings of alienation and loneliness he experiences in America.

Indian Point

Director Ivy Meeropol
Producers Ivy Meeropol, Julie Goldman
Creative producer Peter Lucas
Premiere 2015 Tribeca Film Festival

The Indian Point nuclear power plant looms just 35 miles from Times Square. With over 50 million people living in close proximity to the aging facility, its continued operation has the support of the plant’s operators and the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, yet has stoked a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community, including a vocal antinuclear contingent concerned that what happened at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant could happen here. In the brewing fight for clean energy and the catastrophic possibilities of government complacency, director Ivy Meeropol presents a balanced argument about the issues surrounding nuclear energy and offers a startling reality check for our uncertain nuclear future.

The Infiltrators

Director Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra
Producers Alex Rivera, Cristina Ibarra, Darren Dean, Daniel J. Chalfen
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival, NEXT Innovator Prize & Audience Award: NEXT

A ragtag group of activist Dreamers deliberately get detained by border patrol in order to infiltrate a shadowy, for-profit detention center.

Little Woods

Director Nia DaCosta
Producers Rachael Fung, Tim Headington, Gabrielle Nadig
Premiere 2018 Tribeca Film Festival

For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling fellow residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian health care and meds. When the authorities catch on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister, Deb.

Mediterranea

Director Jonas Carpignano
Producers Jason Michael Berman, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Ryan Lough
Premiere 2015 Cannes Film Festival

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend, Abas, off the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work, he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements

Director Irene Taylor Brodsky
Producers Irene Taylor Brodsky, Tahria Sheather
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

A deeply personal portrait of three lives and the discoveries that lie beyond loss—a deaf boy growing up, his deaf grandfather growing old, and Beethoven the year he was blindsided by deafness and wrote his iconic sonata.

The Mustang

Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
Producers Alain Goldman
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.

Newtown

Director Kim A. Snyder
Producers Maria Cuomo Cole, Kim A. Snyder
Premiere 2016 Sundance Film Festival

After joining the ranks of a growing club no one wants to belong to, the people of Newtown, Connecticut, weave an intimate story of resilience. This film traces the aftermath of the worst mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history as the traumatized community finds a new sense of purpose.

Night Comes On

Director Jordana Spiro
Producers Jonathan Montepare, Alvaro R. Valente, Danielle Renfrew Behrens
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival, NEXT Innovator Award

Angel LaMere is released from juvenile detention on the eve of her 18th birthday. Haunted by her past, she embarks on a journey with her 10-year-old sister that could destroy their future.

Patti Cake$

Director Geremy Jasper
Producers Chris Columbus, Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey, Noah Stahl, Daniela Taplin Lundberg, Rodrigo Teixeira
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival

Straight out of Jersey comes Patricia Dombrowski, a.k.a. Killa P, a.k.a. Patti Cake$, an aspiring rapper fighting through a world of strip malls and strip clubs on an unlikely quest for glory.

The Price

Director Anthony Onah
Producers Justin Begnaud, Anthony Onah, Kishori Rajan
Premiere 2017 SXSW Film Festival

Seyi, a 24-year-old Nigerian American, works on Wall Street. Desperate to succeed because of his outsider status—due to class and race—he commits a crime, insider trading, which brings his entire world crashing down on him. Seyi’s troubled circumstances force him finally to confront his tumultuous relationship with his ailing father, his romantic relationship with his privileged white girlfriend, and his racial and immigrant backgrounds—with nothing less at stake for him than his soul.

Rich Hill

Director Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos
Producers Andrew Droz Palermo, Tracy Droz Tragos
Premiere 2014 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize

In a rural American town, kids face heartbreaking choices, find comfort in the most fragile of family bonds, and dream of a future of possibility.

Selah and the Spades

Director Tayarisha Poe
Producers Lauren McBride, Drew Houpt, Lucas Joaquin, Tayarisha Poe, Jill Ahrens
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Five factions run the underground life of the prestigious Haldwell boarding school. At the head of the most powerful faction—the Spades—sits Selah Summers. By turns charming and callous, she chooses whom to keep close and whom to cut loose, walking the fine line between being feared and loved.

Shadow World

Director Johan Grimonprez
Producers Joslyn Barnes, Anadil Hossain
Premiere 2016 Tribeca Film Festival

Shadow World reveals the shocking realities of the global arms trade—the only business that counts its profits in billions and its losses in human lives. Based, in part, on Corruption Watch UK founder Andrew Feinstein’s globally acclaimed book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, the film reveals how the international trade in weapons—with the complicity of governments and intelligence agencies; investigative and prosecutorial bodies; and weapons manufacturers, dealers and agents—fosters corruption, determines economic and foreign policies, undermines democracy, and creates widespread suffering.

Solitary

Director Kristi Jacobson
Producers Julie Goldman, Kristi Jacobson, Katie Mitchell
Premiere 2016 Tribeca Film Festival

Step inside a supermax prison in this unflinching exploration of life inside one of America’s most notorious prisons, where inmates live in eight-by-ten-foot cells, 23 hours per day for months, years, and sometimes decades. Featuring unprecedented access to Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, the film presents intimate interviews with inmates while capturing the daily life there.

Sorry To Bother You

Director Boots Riley
Producers Nina Yang Bongiovi, Forest Whitaker, Charles King, George Rush, Jonathan Duffy, Kelly Williams
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival

In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, black telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success—which propels him into a macabre universe.

Speed Sisters

Director Amber Fares
Producers Jessica Devaney, Amber Fares, Avi Goldstein
Premiere 2015 Hot Docs

The Speed Sisters is the first all-women race-car-driving team in the Middle East. Grabbing headlines and turning heads at improvised tracks across the West Bank, these five women have sped their way into the heart of the gritty, male-dominated Palestinian street car-racing scene. Weaving together their lives on and off the track, Speed Sisters takes you on a surprising journey into the drive to go further and faster than anyone thought you could.

Strong Island

Director Yance Ford
Producers Joslyn Barnes, Yance Ford
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling

Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and reimagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Swallow

Director Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Producers Mollye Asher, Mynette Louie, Carole Baraton, Fred Fiore
Premiere 2019 Tribeca Film Festival

When a young, newly pregnant housewife develops the compulsion to consume inedible objects, she must elude her husband’s controlling family to uncover the cause of her obsession.

They Call Us Monsters

Director Benjamin Lear
Producers Sasha Alpert, Gabriel Cowan, Benjamin Lear
Premiere 2016 LA Film Festival

They Call Us Monsters takes us behind the walls of the Compound, where Los Angeles houses its most violent juvenile offenders. To their advocates, they’re kids. To the system, they’re adults. To their victims, they’re monsters. This film asks us to decide for ourselves.

This Is Home

Director Alexandra Shiva
Producers Lindsey Megrue, Alexandra Shiva
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival, World Cinema Documentary Audience Award

This is an intimate portrait of four Syrian families arriving in Baltimore, Maryland, and struggling to find their footing. With eight months to become self-sufficient, they must forge ahead to rebuild their lives. When the travel ban adds further complications, their strength and resilience are put to the test.

A Thousand Cuts

Director Ramona S. Diaz
Producers Ramona S. Diaz, Leah Marino, Julie Goldman, Chris Clements, Carolyn Hepburn
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy.

To Dust

Director Shawn Snyder
Producers Josh Crook, Scott Floyd Lochmus, Emily Mortimer, Alessandro Nivola, Ron Perlman
Premiere 2018 Tribeca Film Festival

Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor distraught by his wife’s untimely death, struggles to find religious solace while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a community-college biology professor, the two embark on an increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.

The Truffle Hunters

Director Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
Producers Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival

In the secret forests of Northern Italy, a dwindling group of joyful old men and their faithful dogs search for the world’s most expensive ingredient, the white Alba truffle. Their stories form a real-life fairy tale that celebrates human passion in a fragile land that seems forgotten in time.

Unrest

Director Jennifer Brea
Producers Jennifer Brea, Lindsey Dryden, Patricia E. Gillespie, Alysa Nahmias
Premiere 2017 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing

When Harvard PhD student Jennifer Brea is struck down at 28 years old by a fever that leaves her bedridden, doctors tell her it’s “all in her head.” Determined to live, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story—and four other families’ stories—fighting a disease medicine forgot.

Us Kids

Director Kim A. Snyder
Producers Kim A. Snyder, Maria Cuomo Cole, Lori Cheatle
Premiere 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Determined to turn unfathomable tragedy into action, the teenage survivors of Parkland, Florida catalyze a powerful, unprecedented youth movement that spreads with lightning speed across the country, as a generation of mobilized youth take back democracy in this powerful coming-of-age story.

Where's My Roy Cohn?

Director Matt Tyrnauer
Producers Matt Tyrnauer, Corey Reeser, Marie Brenner, Joyce Deep
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Roy Cohn personified the dark arts of American politics, turning empty vessels into dangerous demagogues—from Joseph McCarthy to his final project, Donald J. Trump. This thriller-like exposé connects the dots, revealing how a deeply troubled master manipulator shaped our current American nightmare.

The Witch

Director Robert Eggers
Producers Daniel Bekerman, Lars Knudsen, Jodi Redmond, Rodrigo Teixeira, Jay Van Hoy
Premiere 2015 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Dramatic Directing Award

In New England in the 1630s, William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life with five children, homesteading on the edge of an impassable wilderness. When their newborn son vanishes and crops fail, the family turns on one another. Beyond their worst fears, a supernatural evil lurks in the nearby wood.

The Wolf Hour

Director Alistair Banks Griffin
Producers Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Bailey Conway Anglewicz, Bradley Pilz
Premiere 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Once a known counterculture figure, June E. Leigh now lives in self-imposed exile in her South Bronx apartment during the incendiary 1977 Summer of Sam. When an unseen tormentor begins exploiting June’s weaknesses, her insular universe begins to unravel.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Director Morgan Neville
Producers Caryn Capotosto, Nicholas Ma
Premiere 2018 Sundance Film Festival

Fred Rogers used puppets and play to explore complex social issues—race, disability, equality, and tragedy—helping form the American concept of childhood. He spoke directly to children and they responded enthusiastically. Yet, today, his impact is unclear. Have we lived up to Fred’s ideal of good neighbors?

XY CHELSEA

Director Tim Travers Hawkins
Producers Julia Nottingham
Premiere 2019 Tribeca Film Festival

Chelsea Manning—trans woman, former intelligence analyst, and prisoner—is appealing her 35-year sentence for leaking U.S. military and diplomatic documents. However, after she attempts suicide, her legal team, friends, and family realize this is a fight not just for her freedom but for her existence.

Filmmaker Deliverables

If selected, filmmakers will collaborate with the Catalyst team and expert advisors through a rigorous preparations process during the weeks leading up to Catalyst Forum in the following ways:

Further developing a viable financing plan, including full project budget, recoupment waterfall, and crediting tiers.
Preparing and rehearsing a live project presentation led by the director and producer that includes the project’s story, footage or still images (if applicable), budget and financing overview, and distribution and outreach plan.
Creating a designed project deck to circulate to investors.
Building a detailed communications plan to engage with interested and committed investors post-forum.

Applications & Timeline

Application Timeline

March–May 2021—Application period
July 2021—Projects selected
July–September 2021—Filmmaker preparations
September 2021—Catalyst Forum

News & Stories

Why We Celebrate Indigenous Voices

November 24, 2021

2022 Sundance Film Festival: New Frontier Spans Biodigital Terrain, Blends Online & In-Person in Real Time

November 22, 2021

2022 Sundance Film Festival: New Local Lens Program to Provide Select Free Screenings and Offerings for Utah Residents Across the State

November 11, 2021

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Catalyst

Catalyst Forum Project Criteria

Past Catalyst Projects

Akicita: The Battle of Standing Rock

Always in Season

Audrie & Daisy

The Bad Kids

Beach Rats

Before You Know It

Blowin' Up

Bull

Cartel Land

Chasing Coral

Crip Camp

Dark Money

The Devil We Know

Farewell Amor

The Fight

The Force

The 40-Year-Old-Version

The Great American Lie

Hooligan Sparrow

The House of Tomorrow

The Hunting Ground

I’m No Longer Here

Indian Point

The Infiltrators

Inventing Tomorrow

Jacqueline (Argentine)

The Keepers

The Kingmaker

Little Woods

Mediterranea

Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements

The Mustang

Newtown

Night Comes On

Patti Cake$

The Price

Rich Hill

Selah and the Spades

Shadow World

Solitary

Sorry To Bother You

Speed Sisters

Strong Island

Swallow

They Call Us Monsters

This Is Home

A Thousand Cuts

To Dust

The Truffle Hunters

Unrest

Us Kids

Where's My Roy Cohn?

The Witch

The Wolf Hour

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

XY CHELSEA

3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets

Filmmaker Deliverables​

Applications & Timeline​

News & Stories

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Applications & Timeline

Endowment support

Filmmaker Deliverables

Applications & Timeline